Gonna be honest. I woulda linked this article no matter what it said. Once I saw the phrase “slickly-packaged razzmatazz” I was sold.

But I read it, and BBC’s Washington Bureau Chief Simon Wilson sees America in America’s Game. Partially in the obvious — the beer, hot dogs, National Anthem and racing presidents about which the “razzmatazz” line gets trotted out — and sees something deeper. After making the time-worn observation about how even the best hitters fail two-thirds of the time, he says:

As a sport, it is really all about failure. Or more precisely how the players psychologically handle failure – the fact that they are going to miss the ball more often than they hit it. And as I have sat in the stands over the years, I have begun to realise just why there is such a rich tradition of treating baseball as a metaphor for life in America … This is indeed the land of opportunity where children grow up being told what a “great job” they are doing and how they might all be president one day. Which is all fine of course, except that for many, perhaps for most Americans, success never really comes.

But despite that — despite the odds being long, the economy sputtering for so long — Americans, he observes, pick themselves up, dust themselves off. They move to far flung places and start new jobs and try to make a new go of it. “Failure – the theory goes – will breed the next success,” Wilson says and believes that it applies equally to baseball and America as whole.

I want to believe that. Indeed, when I think of the promise of America or the American dream I don’t think of some Horatio Alger story. I don’t think of someone coming from nothing and making millions. I think of people who are near nothing anyway but still go on and still plug away and don’t spend as much time lamenting their lot as they do trying to better it, at least marginally.

Maybe that’s just as much a rarity — or even a fantasy — as the Horatio Alger story. And maybe it’s colored a lot by where I grew up. People in Flint, Michigan and Southern West Virginia tend not to go in for Horatio Alger. They just plug on. But I it’s what I think of as the best of America.

Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports that the Angels will acquire second baseman Ian Kinsler from the Tigers. It is not known yet what the Tigers will receive in return. Kinsler had to waive his no-trade clause in order for the deal to happen.

Kinsler, 35, hit .236/.313/.412 with 22 home runs, 52 RBI, 90 runs scored, and 14 stolen bases in 613 plate appearances for the Tigers this past season. He’s in the final year of his contract and will earn $10 million for the 2018 season.

The Angels were certainly looking to upgrade at second base and did so with Kinsler. They were also reportedly interested in Cesar Hernandez of the Phillies.